Hello again Timothy,
On 01/21/2021 6:44 AM Timothy Collinson - timothy.collinson at port.ac.uk <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
Hi Phil,
The only link the SSBNs I served had on patrol with the outside world were family grams of about 100 words and anything that might impact the sailor's morale in a negative way would be censored. News was usually a couple of days to about a week late so a lot of sports fanatics had withdrawal symptoms.
I was surprised by the first UK's lockdown (or perhaps more accurately towards the end of it when sport was returning to life and tv) just *quite* how tied to it some people's lives seemed to be.
Just last week I was beating my head against the desk with news reports (after days of headlines of the UK's terrible daily death rates) about how top flight footballers themselves - allowed to play despite everyone else being locked up - just *couldn't* keep themselves from celebrating a goal in close proximity with other other players (i.e. hugs etc). For crying out loud! You're paid tens of thousands of pounds to be a professional; people are dying; you can rehearse a planned celebration; but you can't stop yourself hugging another player?!?! <sorry, my daughter is about to ban me from watching/listening to news thanks to my rants> (Today's was news that this supposed 'month of January' lockdown may now be going on till May. May?!
I avoid listening to the news since I to tend to rant. I'm tired of hearing the rates of everything related to the pandemic. In Washington, the state, they have banned eat in dining at restaurants or working out in gyms but you can go to the casinos to gamble and eat or go to bingo halls to play that silly game.
The cycle was stand a watch, do after watch cleanup, maintenance, study for qualifications, work on college courses, watch movies, read books, do laundry, eat, and a sleep. Then there were the fire, flooding, loss of the reactor, torpedo, and missile drills to break-up the monotony. Of course there were occasionally real emergencies that occurred to. To figure out if it was day or night you went to the control room to see if it had white lights for day and red or blue lights for night.
<snipped for use in the Trade War chapter of The Traveller Adventure where the PCs are cooped up on the March Harrier for some five weeks on the trot - one week in Jump to the coordinates, three weeks on station, one week back>
Thank you.
That in a nut shell is how being on a patrol worked.
OK, and to the point, perhaps... what was it like on returning to port after a patrol? Immediate newsfest? Couldn't care less? Or were 'gone' (home, presumably) so fast, no one could see you for dust?
The first SSBN we flew from Pearl Harbor, HI to Guam went to sea came back turned over the boat left three or four days later to fly from Guam back to Pearl. Once back at Pearl everyone took off as quickly as possible for home, except of course those sods that lived in the barracks and those detailed to get all the stuff we had to haul back to Pearl. The married guys would head off to be with wives and kids. After a couple of days we would go to the office crew for 8 hrs a day, be sent off to schools, and stand more watches. Some of the crew, mainly the single sailors would head off to various watering holes.
The two other SSBNs were forward deployed to Holy Loch, Scotland. This time we flew from Connecticut to one of the airports to the east of Holy Loch and take buses and the ferry. Basically the same routine as in Pearl.
The SSN there was no flying to and from unless you where lucky to be left behind for a period of time or left the boat early. Returning to home port you usually saw shoe soles and ass holes leaving the boat, except for the watch section that had duty.
Tom Rux